Sterben Ihn Zu Küssen
by a daughter called random
Summary: Because a Liesel without a Rudy is like a word without a meaning.


**Disclaimer: _The Book Thief_ is the property of Markus Zusak and no copyright infringement is intended from here onwards. The first little bit of this is taken from the book, and I nabbed the bit about Hans & Rosa, so I can't take any credit for that.**

Well, it's just my version of our favourite type of fanfiction isn't it? And probably the most abundant type on here. I hope you enjoy nevertheless. 

* * *

There were shocked pyjamas and torn faces. It was the boy's hair she saw first.

Rudy?

She did more than mouth the word now. "Rudy?"

He lay with yellow hair and closed eyes, and the book thief ran toward him and fell down. She dropped the black book. "Rudy," she sobbed, "wake up..." She grabbed him by the shirt and gave him just the slightest disbelieving shake. "Wake up, Rudy," and now, as the sky went on heating and showering ash, Liesel was holding Rudy Steiner's shirt by the front. "Rudy, please." The tears grappled with her face. "Rudy, please, wake up, Goddamn it, wake up, I love you. Come on, Rudy, come on, Jesse Owens, don't you know I love you, wake up, wake up, wake up..."

But nothing cared.

The rubble just climbed higher. Concrete hills with caps of red. A beautiful tear-stomped girl, shaking the dead. "Come on, Jesse Owens― " But the boy did not wake. In disbelief, Liesel buried her head into Rudy's chest. She held his limp body, trying to keep him from lolling back, until she needed to return him to the butchered ground. She did it gently.

Slow.

Slow.

"God, Rudy..."

She leaned down and looked at his lifeless face and Liesel kissed her best friend, Rudy Steiner, soft and true on his lips. He tasted dusty and sweet. He tasted like regret in the shadows of trees and in the glow of the anarchist's suit collection. She kissed him long and soft, and when she pulled herself away, she touched his mouth with her fingers. Her hands were trembling, her lips were fleshy, and she leaned in once more, this time losing control and misjudging it. Their teeth collided on the demolished world of Himmel Street.

You know how I said that sometimes I rushed? That sometimes, certain people cling to life longer than I expect them to?

Well, let me show you something:

A dead mouth started kissing the book thief back, surprisingly eager, with a burned tongue and desiccated lips. Liesel ripped away in horror and stared down at the corpse. Which slowly began to cough. Rudy Steiner could not sit up but he coughed and gorgeous, dark red blood erupted from his lips and in places, the sky was bruising his pyjamas.

Liesel Meminger reacted just how you'd expect anyone to react. She screamed.

She screamed at Rudy, at Hitler ―at me, probably, why wouldn't she? ― and at the LSE officers. "_Er lebt!_ Over here – _schnell_, God damn it, he's _alive_!" And she rubbed her eyes, over and over, until they ached and were raw, to make sure she wasn't dreaming. I walked over to her and Rudy and she gazed at the ravaged sky and she look at me. "_Danke,_" she whispered.  
"You're welcome," I replied.

The LSE officers ran and one of them, the stronger, scooped up Rudy Steiner's limp, yet quite alive, body. "Unbelievable," the other said. "Two kids alive, in all this mess. God must like them,"

_Not God, my friend_, I thought. _He has nothing to do with this. _The one who believed that God favoured little German children, picked up Liesel like a baby and they carried them both gently to their jeep someway off. Rudy seemed near to passing out again, unable to think, but Liesel protested, twisting and turning in the man's arms. "_Nein_," she whimpered. "My mama and papa…I've got to― no, please, wait, Papa―!" And she started to cry in earnest, pleadingly, for the accordionist and the wardrobe.

Unfortunately, as the officers were arriving, as the scalding sky began to snow, I was guiltily holding Liesel's papa in one arm and her mama in the other. I had found Hans sitting up, looking around like he was perhaps a little puzzled. He greeted me, like all the best ones do. Rosa appeared to be mid-snore, her mouth open and her papery pink lips still moving. If she'd seen me, I'm sure she would have called me a _Saukerl_, though I would not have taken it badly. Both of the Hubermann's souls had been so soft.

The two children were bundled into the back of the jeep and then the fallen world of Himmel Street was vanishing behind them. The jeep was speeding off along the road, avoiding large chunks of building and deep trenches in the ground. Every now and again the two LSE men who sat in the front seat would turn around and ask how they were holding out. After one man asked them this five times, Rudy, who was bone pale and very bloody, answered for the first time, "I feel like shit!" The man almost nodded, turned away, and told to driver to go faster.

Rudy was sprawling across the whole of the backseat, his bare feet slightly blue, with his head in Liesel's lap. Rudy had been dreaming of this since she'd shown the children of Himmel Street that a girl from whose brother had died on a train and who could barely even speak German was a better goalie than any of them. A bone in his leg is poking out of the skin and Liesel is stroking her fingers through his lemon-coloured hair.

She touched the cold, sticky blood on the side of his face and he looked up at her, grinning dizzily. You'd have thought his severe concussion would have swollen over his ego. If you _did_ think this, you were mistaken. "So, you love me, do you _Saumensch?_"  
She tugged on locks of his sunny hair, without any intention of harming him. Her smile was angry but tender. "_Saukerl_," she whispered, like an endearment. "No, I don't." Which, as you've most likely guessed, meant that she did.  
"Oh," He leant into her hand wearily, closing his eyes for a moment. "Because I love you Liesel. A lot." Rudy got a pat on the shoulder for his efforts, which were valiant in his condition. He strained his face upwards a little, hopefully, "Can I have another kiss, _arschloch?_ Or did you only do it because I was dead?" Liesel didn't answer for a moment, just continued to burrow her way through his dirty hair.  
"Make me a promise, Rudy…"  
"_Was ist das?_"  
"Never die, okay? _Versprechen Sie_?"  
Rudy Steiner smiled and there was still blood in his mouth. "_Ich verspreche es._"

I do not take any pleasure in telling you this, none whatsoever.

Rudy Steiner gets to me, he stands on my heart, he makes me cry. Nevertheless, I can safely tell you that the Alex and Barbra's little bad egg is going to break his promise to the book thief – give it about half an hour, after the two children are taken out of the car and into the hospital. Jesse Owens's biggest fan will not make it past tomorrows dripping sunrise. Trust me, I cradled him gently, that poor boy; and I assured him that, could he see me, I would definitely be carrying a scythe. Just for him.

"Rudy." Liesel savoured the word, the name, the way it tasted on her tongue. It danced there. Then Liesel Meminger finally noticed the creases of pain on Rudy's face, and she thought of a cardboard face and elastic hair, which made her think of silver eyes and an accordion. The girl's sorrow started to clean the blood off her best friend's face. "Papa. Papa. _Papa_." She began to sob.

Rudy held her hand awkwardly and it must've felt like the most comforting thing in the world. "Rosa and her wooden spoon," Rudy remembered gently, "She knew how to give a _watschen_, didn't she? Tommy Muller..." And the tears cleared pathways on his face.

"Your mama. Your brothers and sisters...!" she wailed to him.

**~ A SNATCHED MOMENT OF CHILDHOOD ~**

**Ten minutes of their journey remained,  
and one grown man with a moustache, the driver,  
could not bring himself to wipe away his tears.  
The other thought about his four-year-old daughter.  
In the backseat all that could be heard  
was the grief of two orphans who had once lived on  
a street named after Heaven.**

It may interest you to know that when I collected the purplish souls of LSE officers Christof Eichelberger and Jan Gottschalk, they were both sitting up, with their arms outstretched.


End file.
